An editor, a reporter and an academic walked into a bar. And although lots of jokes could flow from there, the bar was at the Marriott Wardman Park in D.C., where ASNE was about to open its 2012 convention. So what followed was three days of tools, strategies and inspirational journalism.

If you call someone a grammar monkey, you'll be more right than you know. Research already has shown that monkeys understand some basic grammar principles, such as which words logically follow other words. Now, Harvard scientists have taught 14 cotton-top tamarins to recognize the linguistic principle of suffixes and prefixes.

If you ask online journalists what skills are more important in an online newsroom, what you'll hear are the attributes that largely define a copy editor. C. Max Magee, a graduate student at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, asked exactly that question, and his results have been released by the Online News Association. Top skills: attention to detail, news judgment, grammar, multitasking, dealing with deadlines. As Medill professor Rich Gordon says, "the traditional journalism job that most resembles online newsroom roles is that of copy editor."